Sick Beauty
by Mel-Girl
Summary: There's a point in which one should question their sanity. Thiefshipping. Late birthday gift for rohanfox.


**This is probably the weirdest shit I ever wrote. A bit OOC, I suppose but eh, Marik's insane, Ryou's depressed, what can ya do? XD**

**Happy belated birthday toooooo rohanfox! This fic is for you and I hope it's half decent considering I wrote this instead of doing homework. Yay for procrastination that I'm going to regret later. :D**

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**Marik's POV**

I waited oh so eagerly for the day. My act of being the loyal friend and staying at his side during his torture was a masterpiece. Truly Oscar worthy, my god. How it damaged Ryou was just amazing to me. The blood dripping down his arm could have been the most arousing thing in the world to me. Just imagine if it started leaking from the heart.

What's more is that I knew what the source of all this was. The Sennen Ring. An Ancient Egyptian artefact, which was basically a necklace with spikes hanging off it. Only certain people can wear such a thing without facing physical pain. To be honest, I'd rather not be destined for the Sennen Ring. If I can become a tainted angel like Ryou, perhaps I could feel beautiful instead of ugly and scarred.

And the day came.

With the spare keys Ryou gave me, I slipped into his apartment and saw the boy deep in slumber. On the bedside table lay the Sennen Ring. Taking a few steps closer, Ryou's eyelids flew open and he burst into tears.

Oh the humanity!

I cannot take tears of anguish. Savour the slashes on your arm and wrist scars. Think of the voices in your head as a painstakingly precious melody. That crying made it seem like you don't like it, Ryou. I don't understand. What seemed so unusual and interesting to an onlooker like me is hated so by the likes of you, Ryou.

Therefore you can't possibly belong to the Sennen Ring. I know that there's a spirit in that Ring and while I never directly witness it in action, I always know the outcome. Ryou believed in me as a friend and that I would comfort him through what he dubbed as 'abuse'. But dear Ryou, you are wrong to come to the likes of a masochist part time sadist. What a nonsensical occupation, isn't it? How cruel that the one you considered friend loves that you go through such mental and physical torture and dare I say it, wants to go through such things as well?

Odd, isn't it?

Sometimes it's fun to give Ryou alcohol and tell him to drink the pain away. Then his emotional pain doubles later on and I watch him with fascination.

Everyday I urge the spirit of the Sennen Ring to emerge in his true form. Even though I've never seen it, I'm convinced he's there. Because I need an entity to love and if it not be the object, it must be what dwells in the object.

"Marik, why is it that whenever I try to get rid of it, it always returns much, much worse? I don't understand it in the slightest," Ryou said through muffled cries, his head in his wounded, wounded hands. I jump onto the bed and crawl up beside Ryou and use my fingers to gently lift his chin up. My smile and eyes are catlike and cunning. There's nothing trustworthy about this feline friend, my dear Ryou. "Marik... I just don't know what to do anymore! Nothing we try seems to work!" I smirked at this because I never intended for anything to work at all. Why, that would mean no more spirit of the Sennen Ring. Marik could not have that, not at all, not at all.

"There's always a way, my sweet Ryou," I purred, reaching out to the Sennen Ring. My hand lingered on the stone cold artefact and the gold shimmered. Ah, if only such a beautiful no, exquisite piece of jewellery yearned for me as I it. If only the spirit felt my longing from afar. "In fact, I thought that maybe... maybe just throwing it away isn't the way to go. A new owner is in order perhaps?"

Ryou gasped. "Wait –"

I clutched the Sennen Ring in my hands and ran my tongue up one of the spikes. The cool metallic taste is to perfection. "Mmm, if you want, I could take it off your hands for a while. See how you cope that way," I suggested, avoiding the fact that I had so wished to have suggested this from the very beginning. But Ryou isn't that easily convinced about that sort of thing. Even if the Sennen Ring was surely the cause of pain for Ryou, his father did give him that artefact as a gift thus he treasured it so. Not nearly as much as I do obviously.

The white haired teenager doesn't react at my actions; he's put up with that behaviour for quite a while now. Instead it's my words he paid attention to. "I know you've been fascinated with the Sennen Ring since you first laid eyes on it... It is unusual, isn't it? I don't think it's the source of the problem but maybe I'll let you borrow it for a while. Because it's you."

"Why thank you, Ryou!" My claws wrap around my prey securely and I pranced away victoriously. The Sennen Ring is in my clutches now. It's in my clutches!

No stealing or anything.

Just cold hard manipulation.

Even this pretty face hides the demeanor of a true bastard.

Stupid, stupid Ryou. He considered me of all people a friend? What a pitiful soul. He could not realise such artistic beauty of this historical artefact and what lies within. I want to taste the spirit within me, his voice singing to me such sweet songs of murderous intent. This sick mindfuck could never be appreciated by a melancholic boy like Ryou.

I returned to my own apartment room and immediately rushed to the mirror. The first glimpse of the Sennen Ring and its new puppet. Dare the puppet try these new strings? I think it should. Especially after all the trouble the predator hunted down its most desired. Dogs has masters, cats have slaves. I always considered myself to be the cat because then there'd be only one thing I revere. My god. I'm certain that within this Sennen Ring is my god.

_Curiosity killed the cat,_ said a voice in the back of my mind. Kukuku, cats have nine lives. I'd give them all if I can confirm this spirit to be true.

So I slipped on the artefact and immediately the Ring's spikes pierced my skin. My eyes rolled into the back of my head and I died oh so beautifully. Tell me that I'll find this spirit in the very depths of Hell. If only, if only... To die this young would've been interesting. After all, the main idea is to die young as late as possible. I saw light and refused to offer myself to it for there is no beauty in it. Where is my beloved spirit? Do you still haunt the stupid child that is Ryou? Why can't you open yourself to me who desires you with all my heart?

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Red stains drench my clothes. My left eye lazily widened and I felt it still there. A ghostly figure looms over me with their spiked hair and deep brown eyes. I swore that it resembled Ryou yet this feeling in the air; I just knew that it wasn't. The spirit, perhaps? A hand that probably belonged to me reached out towards the figure and I whispered words that didn't make sense.

The ghostly figure rolled their eyes. "You're alive," he remarked rather casually and I sat up immediately. Blood dripped from my chest and I saw that I was still wearing the Sennen Ring even though the spikes that hung off the round centre were still settled through my skin. Ah... It feels like I'm a part of it this way... "It's odd because I really did try to kill you but something about you resisted that and accepted me wholeheartedly. Never mind that. You hang out with my host, right? Where is he?"

I need a name for you, beautiful spirit... I'm sure it is you. I know it had to be you, spirit. You know that I really would let you succeed usually but I had to confirm your existence. I had to know that what I believed in was real. Do you have a name, o beautiful spirit?

He raised an eyebrow at me. "You're a real freak, you know that? Call me...Bakura," he decided as he floated down so that his ghostly figure was right there before me, honouring me with his desirable presence.

"Bakura..." The name sounded perfect from my lips. But a rose by any other name would've just smelled just as sweet. It didn't matter what he wanted me to call him for anything, if it's a part of him, then I can appreciate it more than anyone in the world. "You know how long I've waited... to have met you? I was sure you existed, I was oh so sure of it."

"Where is my host?" he asked again. I glowered.

"Who cares? There's only us now! Bakura, Bakura!" I reached out to him and watched as my arms passed right through him. How I wanted to kiss those lips and feel his true form within me. "Do to me what you do to Ryou! Only better! Please, please!"

"Where is my host?!" he asked for a third time; his eyes darkening just as I envisioned. But why would he ask for that bastard child? He doesn't appreciate you as much as I do. "You're not the true host for the Sennen Ring! You're free to feel whatever you want towards me but if I request something, then I expect you to comply."

Ahahaha!! But of course! Let's go! Let's go see Ryou! Whatever you wish, Bakura! I got onto my feet and ignored the bloody mess on the floor and the state of my clothes. If Bakura expected anything from me, I am obliged to fulfil such wishes. He would learn to love my loyalty.

But... if within the first moments of meeting me that he wants to see Ryou, where do I stand with him?

I stopped in my tracks when we got to about halfway between my residence and Ryou's. "Bakura-sama, why do you want to know about Ryou? What about me? Ryou entrusted you to me; he really did. Therefore we're perfect... right?"

Bakura smirked. "Listen, all I want to do is fulfil my own motives and he's a convenient host in which I can fulfil my goals. So lead me back to him so I don't have to waste time."

"But it doesn't matter which host so long as it's convenient, right? I mean, Ryou's always been depressed so wouldn't you rather have someone like me who desires you rather than a pathetic excuse for a human being?"

He scowled. "You... You don't care for Ryou, do you? Even though you pretend you do to his face. Hey..." His lips twisted back into a glorious grin. I felt my heart beat faster even though the warmth had long deserted this living vessel. "It can never be just you and me if there's Ryou."

When he said those, I automatically decided that was his way of saying that I should eliminate Ryou.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

I went to visit Ryou about three days later. How Bakura's every single word consumed me during that time. Everything he did was like food to me, feeding my ever-growing hunger. It wasn't enough that he was just a spirit anymore. I needed to belong to him so that he would deal out what he dealt to Ryou. Whenever I said this to him, he shook his head and told me I'm an idiot. Only an idiot for love, Bakura. Won't you see?

His wrists began to show signs of new scars and it didn't make sense to me. I didn't speak a word but it confused me so. In fact, Ryou still seemed to be going through anguish and suffering. Just maybe...

"He does this to himself," Bakura told me. I didn't believe him. How was that even possible? It's Ryou. He's suffering yes, but he could never hurt himself intentionally. It had to be Bakura behind all this. "Marik, you're incredibly blind."

Ryou filled up the kettle with water and flicked on the switch to boil tea. He didn't hear what Bakura said to me. But no matter, Bakura isn't making sense to me. Whatever. It can never be just Bakura and I if there's Ryou in the equation. I told Ryou that I could make the tea because I brought over some new tea for the two of us to try out.

Of course that's a lie.

Even so, the fool let me take over the kitchen. My catlike claws clutch on the handle of a knife from the knife rack. Bakura bursts out laughing. "Do you have the guts?!" he crowed, only motivating me to go ahead with this. "Go on! I dare you! If you love me so much, you can suffer for the rest of your life! Go destroy the only person to ever befriend you! Do it! You'd do it if Bakura-sama told you to, right?"

"But of course, Bakura!" I replied, taking out the knife and brandishing towards him in proof of my determination. For I would always do as told if I'm told by Bakura.

As if he was the one called, Ryou emerged into the kitchen and saw me wielding the largest kitchen knife. He blinked a couple of times. "I haven't heard you say my last name since before we became friends. When we first met. But um... why have you got that knife out?"

I feigned a look of oblivion and held the knife up as if it was a foreign object. My fingers prick the tips and droplets of blood slide from fingertips onto the blade of the knife. "But I wasn't saying your last name. Bakura's name belongs to him and him alone."

He stared at me in confusion. "It's Ryou Bakura. My name. It's Ryou Bakura. Can you please put that knife down? Let's make that tea – I need to discuss something urgent with you. You're wearing my Sennen Ring as if it's yours and it's starting to bother me." Your Sennen Ring? What are you talking about? Since when was it _your_ Sennen Ring? "Marik, I agreed to letting you borrow it but I want it back. Please." You should try asking a fellow such a question when he does not have a knife in hand. After all, I was never your friend, not like you thought. "Marik, the Sennen Ring doesn't belong to you."

"It doesn't belong to anyone except Bakura!!" I roared at the top of my lungs. He backed off as I raised the knife. I decided to place the knife on the kitchen bench, which seemed to put Ryou at more ease. Even though his whole body was shaking. Am I scaring you shitless, Ryou? Oh joy. If you can't appreciate what Bakura's done to you, then maybe you could learn to appreciate what I do to you.

Maybe you enjoy the fact I don't like you at all. My manipulation and desire to take everything you considered yours away from you... was that arousing? Does my love for Bakura make you happy because it means I'll stay with you for the sake of him? In that sense, maybe you're just as batshit insane as I.

There is the possibility that this is a disease. Maybe it's spreading amongst us three. Bakura wants to see Ryou for what Ryou does to him. I want to see Bakura for what he has done to me. And Ryou wants to see me for what I have done to him.

"Or maybe it's all in your head," Bakura remarked. "I told you, I don't care for Ryou."

I laughed. "Then that means it's not a disease and I'm not deluded at all! And the deluded one is Ryou!"

As I reached once more for the knife, I felt Ryou shove me to the kitchen floor. "Marik, we need to get you to a doctor! I know my state isn't good but you... you obviously haven't been taking medication at all! Please restrain yourself!"

"Medication?!" I spat in his face. "Why the fuck do I need medication? Are you trying to say that it's all in my head? Because I know the pain Bakura brings you and why, I want to take that all for myself!" My strength overcame Ryou's and I was able to kick him off me and threw my hand out to the handle of the knife. And I stopped thinking.

The blade slashed out in any direction and the screams did not register in my mind. I couldn't see or hear or think. Bakura probably told me that I was too blind or deaf to the situation and that I lost all sense of rationality. That couldn't be true. I was only fulfilling what you asked of me, Bakura.

And the results at the end of it! A blood-drenched corpse. I had slit his throat and his hands were only just attached to his arms. My hand delved into the body and I could pull out any organ I wanted. To think that by my own hands, I could slash a knife so much that my victim could have any part taken away from him. Maybe Ryou wanted that. But if Ryou wants me to take his heart, does Bakura want my heart? He snorted at this and said he didn't care.

"I did exactly as you wanted, Bakura-sama!" I exclaimed.

He shook his head. "Wrong. I never said I wanted you to. I don't care for Ryou as anything more than a host. But I told you to kill Ryou so that I could sever my ties with him and also test your loyalty in the process. Now that you have killed your friend and offered yourself to the likes of me, you will truly suffer."

**No POV**

This is the truth. No bias but mere statements of what had truly been going on prior to the beginning of this tale where Marik finally got his hands on the Sennen Ring.

Ryou and Marik had met at a meeting for those suffering from a disorder of some kind. Since his mother and sister died and his father abandoned him with nothing more than the Sennen Ring, Ryou believed it was all he had. He began to suffer from depression to the point of self-harm. When he met Marik, he felt his anxiety go away. But as he got happier, Marik grew more distant. So when Ryou tried to go off his medication, he got worse and Marik stayed with him from that point on.

He noticed Marik's growing fascination with his own life and problems and also his fixation the Sennen Ring. It started to confuse him when Marik believed the Sennen Ring to be the source of the problem. Ryou wondered if maybe keeping it around reminded him too much of his family and how everything about the word 'family' brought him into despair. So he gave Marik the Sennen Ring to see if he could go without the family treasure and maybe let go once and for all.

But when Marik began to talk as if another entity existed within the Sennen Ring, it truly confused him. For there really was and truly was nothing. It occurred to him that he should have paid more attention to Marik's problems instead of being so caught up in his own. When Marik started to kill him, he thought, 'Maybe I deserved this.' But that was only a mere thought amongst a cloud of confusion and anguish.

Ryou knew he was not destined for a better place after death. All he knew was that he was going nowhere; much like how he was going in life.

Marik on the other hand, had always been a bit off since he was a child. Back in Egypt, he was brought up to be the new head of the Ishtar clan and he suffered much since. He had to go through rituals that left him permanently scarred physically and emotionally. When he brought about the death of his father, he felt it was because 'a spirit told him to' and he started to believe that if blood was spilt, a spirit was always behind it all.

At first it made him afraid. Would spirits make him sin more than he already had? He eventually taught himself that maybe he should appreciate these spirits instead of fear them. Once he decided that, he pretty much went down a path of disturbances and instability.

When he became an adult and he tried to kill a fellow student at his university in Cairo because 'a spirit told him to', people finally noticed that Marik had a mental disorder. He believed that spirits were the reason for everything and that everyone should love them. All pain he saw in other people, he wanted and adored. If the person looked unhappy about it, Marik did not understand. Because everyone should see it his way, right?

He started up on his medication and started to improve his behaviour. Feeling accomplished, Marik decided to start fresh in Domino City, Japan and decided that seeing as he wasn't fully cured and needed to make friends, he joined a group meeting for those who wanted to discuss their problems. There, he met a man named Ryou Bakura.

The two became friends and felt that each of them were both almost cured completely of their respective problems. Marik decided he was better and thus abandoned his medication without telling a soul. He even lied to Ryou that he was still taking it just to be sure but it really wasn't the case. Ryou was never exactly sure what Marik suffered from but Marik always seemed to show more interest in other people's problems more than his own.

Marik didn't like it when Ryou was happy and getting better. It was just too boring for him. When Ryou started getting depressed again, Marik liked this and pretended to try and help him when really, he just wanted to see someone suffer. He learnt of the Sennen Ring and found the artefact so unusual and exotic that it couldn't possibly _not_ contain mysteries yet to be uncovered. Marik used to see Ryou's scars as self-harm but as he kept away from the medication, his delirious theories started to come into play again. Surely, spirits were the cause of Ryou's problems and that Sennen Ring being a mysterious object in itself had to be the container of the spirit, right?

He began to imagine this spirit as truly existing and he saw Ryou's unhappiness as strange. Ryou should love the spirit too, Marik believed. But he didn't and therefore Ryou wasn't allowed to have the Sennen Ring. Marik got it in his head that he and Ryou weren't actually friends and that he befriended Ryou just to get the Sennen Ring for himself.

Once he got ahold of it, he imagined an entity he called Bakura. Bakura would talk to him and no one else could hear him. And Bakura told Marik to kill Ryou. And because Marik loved Bakura with all his heart, he did.

And all that made perfect sense to Marik.

Whether Bakura really existed, nobody knows.

Do you believe it?

Was Marik really insane or was it a reality?

But from the day Marik killed Ryou onwards, Marik truly suffered.

For he was so caught up in the spirit he dubbed 'Bakura-sama', his sick beauty.

**0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0**

**Review or a spirit will command Marik to kill you. *shot badly***


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